Subject: RE: [lojban] Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 16:58:27 -0400

At 11:44 AM 06/13/2001 -0400, Craig wrote:
> >Myself, I am not sure that we won't eventually have Lojban attitudinals
> >that are NOT translatable to other languages.
>
>You mean they aren't already untranslatable?

They certainly are in terms of the way people are TRYING to translate them 
in the ongoing discussion, and to some extent I am irritated that people 
are trying to turn attitudinals into bridi when that is one thing that they 
explicitly are NOT, even if/when there is some degree of propositional 
import to the attitudinal.

(And I am also irritated at any discussion proposing ignoring the book 
which takes place in English. After the baseline is lifted, such a 
discussion between fluent Lojban speakers would be in order, but the 
critical idea behind the baseline is that the language NOT be 
prescriptively changed by agreement, but only by successfully communicated 
usage without recourse to other languages.)

<end official rant> %^)

>I'm beginning to think the
>heart of the debate about assertions comes from a perception that they can't
>just express a detached feeling of hope on the one hand

It is not a "detached" feeling of hope. It is a feeling of hope in some 
way tied to the idea represented by the construct to which it is 
attached. The exact nature of that tie is non-specific and there is *by 
intention* no way to BE specific with attitudinals.

I am pretty sure that .ui ko'a klama is NOT mi gleki lenu ko'a klama. It 
is closer to mi pe sekai leka mi gleki cu cinmo zo'e lenu ko'a klama. I 
feel some emotion about ko'as going, and I am characterized by some aspect 
of being happy as part of that feeling, but I resist even that much 
commitment to a bridi claim about my emotions. Rather, someone might 
legitimately make the claim that I seem to be emoting in the indicated 
matter, but the nature of the human condition is that we really aren't 
capable of analyzing our emotions truth-functionally while actually emoting 
them.

One can call this an assumption.

If one can analyze ones emotions, one should use cinmo or the other 
suggested emotion brivla. If one is merely expressing them, then one just 
does so, AT BEST trying to identify the linguistic sign that we most 
closely associate with what we are emoting.

>and that happiness
>doesn't affect the truth value on the other hand - a holdover from English.
>This is why we get questions like 'Right. And what is the non-propositional
>sense of {ai}? "I'm feeling intentuous today"?' which comes from a
>difficulty for English speakers to fathom new ways of describing emotions
>we've felt our whole lives. I still don't get the propositional sense of
>.ui, but I consider that to be my own cultural myopia. So if the fact that
>attitudinals can't be translated is proof of the SWH, then lojban. has
>served its purpose.

The problem is that, until we have fluent use of the language wherein 
people can actually communicate in Lojban whatever communication it is that 
an attitudinal uniquely communicates, AND THEN what is communicated cannot 
be communicated in English, then we have produced something that might 
pertain to the strong SWH.

But we do have ways in English of communicating some attitudes. We 
communicate them using various interjections and body language. .ui mi 
klama describes what is going on in our heads when we smile broadly and 
says something expressing happiness (the obvious "Wheee!" actually pushing 
over the line from mere happiness to exhilaration) while thinking about "mi 
klama". Our happiness is independent of whether or not "mi klama" is 
actually true, but the bridi that is central to the expression is NOT "mi 
cinmo", but rather mi klama.

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org